Freudian Topics - A lawyer reads Freud. With exercises on Greek tragedy
Summer School

When psychoanalysis meets political and social sciences, subjectivity regains a prominent place in scientific research and in the elaboration of proposals for social intervention. Legal science and psychoanalytic science are also related by the investigative method that uses reason and logic to analyse the circumstances, facts and subjective motives that contributed to producing them. Thanks to a strongly interdisciplinary approach, it becomes possible to develop a transversal competence that supports the observation and understanding of the subjective dynamics involved in the different professional specificities of those working in the psychological, social and legal fields. Lawyers, psychologists, doctors and health professions, social workers, educators, teachers, pedagogists, lawyers for minors, school directors, and psychotherapists can learn how to enhance subjectivity and its movements through specific observation and legal reasoning techniques in order to listen, understand and learn how to respond to the specificity of their behaviour and thoughts.

Sigmund Freud's studies on imputability and the criminal mind paved the way for this conjunction of psychoanalysis and law. Analytical work, Freud notes, shows that delinquent or transgressive actions are often committed precisely because they are 'forbidden', and their execution brings psychic relief to the offending subject. Furthermore, by dwelling on guilt-ridden offenders, Freud reverses the usual pattern regarding guilt: guilt 'precedes' and in a certain sense 'causes' crime, it does not descend from it as a consequence.

Criminal behaviour has a calming and regulating effect on the feeling of guilt that animates it. The conception that emerges establishes that there is always a motivation behind criminal behaviour. From time to time, it is a matter of distinguishing between apparent and latent motivations, with a predilection to seek out and analyse those that remain implicit. 

For Freud, jurists and psychoanalysts are called upon to bring hidden psychic material to light, but in quite different ways and contexts. He argued the hysteric and the delinquent both share a secret. However, whereas in the delinquent it is a secret that he knows and keeps hidden, the hysteric does not know his secret. By virtue of the removal that affects ideas, memories, affections, and desires: kept away from consciousness, they produce sanctioning effects in terms of somatic and psychic symptoms. At the same time, he recommends not allowing oneself to be misled by the neurotic: in fact, the latter reacts as if he were guilty, even though he is innocent because a sense of guilt that already existed and brooded within him takes hold of the accusation that is now being made against him (Freud, 1906). 

Literature becomes a privileged field for drawing on materials and narratives that allow analytical and procedural reasoning to be combined. In particular, Greek tragedies offer themselves as prototypes, allowing one to go beyond the mythical and symbolic aspects in order to trace the subjective recurrences that cross the centuries, embodying themselves also in the case history of our days. In this direction, the Greek tragedies become materials for psychoanalytic and procedural analysis, valuable for illuminating current casuistry.

The procedural procedure and judicial reasoning allow for the refinement of observation by accompanying the intentional conduct with specific techniques of material collection and processing, detection and interpretation: the observer, involved in the relationship with the subject in his professional practice, appropriately trained, learns to keep his attention fluctuating (Freud, 1912), recording in memory the details of some significant moments and monitoring his own emotional experiences in order to then share these experiences with the other observers.  (Zaphiriou Woods & Pretorius, 2016).

The objective of the Summer School is to provide the participant, through study, discussion, practical experimentation and seminars conducted by various legal and psychoanalytic professionals, with the fundamental skills to arrive at an effective interpretation of the clinical and dynamic aspects of the observation materials. In fact, the Summer School initiates the intentional use of observation and judicial reasoning starting from psychoanalytic discoveries, offering the possibility of a space for reflection on the observers' affections detected during the work on the case history that will be put under discussion. Lines of intervention will also be prefigured that take into account affective involvement in different professional contexts. The examination of affects will contribute to the development of interpretative prudence, enabling participants to learn to avoid errors, misunderstandings and oversights linked to the over-evaluation of sensory "impressions", to the predominance of emotional reactions that may develop upon impact with the observed situation, or to the prejudiced beliefs that individuals bring to bear in their relations with others, even unintentionally.

For those working in both the psychological and legal fields, training that enhances the competence to observe the specificities of relational and intellectual experience is essential. This is a transversal competence that enhances and supports the different professional specificities of psychologists, psychotherapists, physicians, paediatricians, child neuropsychiatrists, lawyers, social workers, speech therapists, educators, school managers, teachers, pedagogues, who can learn specific techniques to observe psychic life, to listen, understand and learn to respond to the specificity of the behaviour and thoughts of others.

The training will alternate moments of in-depth theoretical study with moments of discussion on the case history and review of the experience in small groups using an experiential methodology. Participants will be invited to present observation materials to practice the theoretical contents and practical techniques presented step by step during the training days.

Admission

Course with free access

Number of positions

50 available

Useful information

Course with free access.

Application procedure

You can apply from the 03/05/2024 to the 30/06/2024 . Using the online procedure you can register to fill in the application and pay with PagoPA (Credit Card, PayPal) to complete the payment of the admission fee.

Online registration

Online registration Registration guidelines

Organization

Prof.ssa Maria Gabriella Pediconi, RU - Professore aggregato - Dipartimento DESP

maria.pediconi@uniurb.it

Contacts

Maria Gabriella Pediconi

 0722305839   maria.pediconi@uniurb.it

Savino Romani

 3395788076   savino.romani@uniurb.it@uniurb.it

Secretary’s Office

Ufficio Dottorati - Post laurea - Esami di Stato

Via Veterani, 36 - Urbino

Office hours

Monday - Friday from 9.30 am to 13pm

Contacts

 Tel. +39 0722 304637   corsi.postlaurea@uniurb.it